﻿Conspiracy Special: Tracking New Falsehoods Around The Salisbury Attack

This week, the pro-Kremlin media stated that the British government was
behind the Skripal case, the West is meddling in Belarus, the US is conducting
dangerous experiments in Ukraine and – as usual – Ukraine is the provocateur.

What kind of a picture could one paint about Ukraine? At least six pro-Kremlin outlets have been busy creating the image of a dangerous and unpredictable country, by claiming that an Italian journalist went missing in eastern Ukraine. In reality, the journalist is safely back in Italy and now sharing vivid images captured in the government-controlled sector of Mariupol.

To answer this question, we have to dive deeper. We heard claims that the New York Times and the Washington Post are serving the interests of the US military industry. The reasoning of the conspiracy theorists’ goes as follows: the American mass media is attacking and thus manipulating President Trump; the real puppet masters are former generals advising financial corporations and the mass media.

According to pro-Kremlin outlets UK Prime Minister Theresa May was behind the EU’s decision to impose sanctions and this is her way to remind British politicians that they are all part of the conspiracy. No evidence supports these claims, of course; on the contrary there is overwhelming and internationally backed evidence collected by the British Police that demonstrates a solid chain of events, with pictures, connecting the suspects to the locations in the case. The investigation is still ongoing but parts of the material have been released to the public.

The second pro-Kremlin narrative from last week about the Skripals was not completely developed; instead it was presented as a question about the extremely unlikely coincidence that an army colonel and chief nursing officer was amongst the first people to arrive at the scene of their poisoning. As the ever expanding number of contradictory theories about the Skripal case suggests, the strategic aim here is to confuse audiences, not to convince them about a single narrative.

More info about the West meddling in Belarus or the experiments in Ukraine conducted by the US can be found below.

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Disclaimer

Cases in the EUvsDisinfo database focus on messages in the international information space that are identified as providing a partial, distorted, or false depiction of reality and spread key pro-Kremlin messages. This does not necessarily imply, however, that a given outlet is linked to the Kremlin or editorially pro-Kremlin, or that it has intentionally sought to disinform. EUvsDisinfo publications do not represent an official EU position, as the information and opinions expressed are based on media reporting and analysis of the East Stratcom Task Force.